Food Gal Contest Time — One Lucky Winner Gets a $100 Spending Spree

Yes, 100 smackeroos to one clever, imaginative winner to spend at any CSN online store.

You can use the $100 to buy a cool new mixer, cutlery, champagne glasses, a snazzy saute pan or even twin beds.

Hey, I’m just sayin’.

So how do you win this fab prize?

Just give me your best answer to this question: “If I live to be 100, the one culinary fantasy I hope most to experience is….”

The best answer wins the $100 CSN credit to shop to your heart’s desire. Contest is open to residents of North America. Deadline to enter is the end of the day, June 26. The winner will be announced on June 28.

Here’s my own answer to that question:

“I would pick dining at El Bulli in Spain, but since Chef Ferran has announced he intends to close his restaurant sometime in the next two or so years, that might be out. So, my fantasy instead would be to be able to eat everything I want, but only gain three pounds in the process. I don’t think that’s being too greedy, is it? I could have asked not to gain an ounce, but I’m willing to bite the bullet on three pounds. Surely, some genius, techie person out there can make that come true.”

50 comments

I’m with you on this…I’d want to dine in Spain. My father was born in Barcelona but I’ve never had the opportunity to visit Spain. I would love to have a gigantic pot of paella marinera all to myself in a restaurant in Spain. I would also have “caldo Gallego” to start (that’s a soup), lovely little Spanish bread rolls with sweet butter, and I would finish off the meal with some decadent flan.

If I live to be 100, the one culinary fantasy I hope most to experience is to win the Grand Championship at the American Royal Barbecue Competition. It’s the largest barbecue competition in the world, and the “Super Bowl” of barbecue. To think, coming out on top against over 500 competition barbecue teams would be so awesome!

Its my husbands and my 10th Anniversary this year and we want to do it right. We’re planning on going to Italy, so meandering through the towns and savoring the delights along the way as they were meant to be savored would be how I’d use my $100. Exploring the food and the culture of a country, to me it does not get any better.

I’m torn between enjoying a delicious meal grown solely from my expansive organic home garden (fingers crossed it will happen some day!) and a limitless supply of Joseph Schmidt truffles. Apparently my dream lies somewhere between total sustainability and blatant consumerism, but either result would be amazing and well worth it!

If I live to be 100, the one culinary fantasy I hope most to experience is that science finds a sustainable food that can be easily reproduced for the millions of starving people in the world (and that this super-food be organic, free-range, chemical free…and tasty!!!).

My fantasy: It is autumn and I’m staying in a luxurious ryokan in an onsen district. I can see the leaves falling into the hot springs as I eat the freshest fish, home-grown vegetables, homemade ramen and soba noodles in my private room.

If I live to be 100: I can still inspire friends and family to bake it up and have fun.I hope my baking skills are such that I can continue to have nimble fingers and hands to continue kneading and sculpting out desserts. I am healthy enough to still down a chocolate cake in the morning w/o going into cardiac arrest. Lastly, I hope at that point I will have had a chance to meet my two baking heros: Alice Medrich and Shirley Corihher.

My culinary fantasy I Most want to experience If I live to be 100 is compelte induldgence of Paris. Especially Pierre Herme’s choclates and macaroons. I would want to eat Foie Gras and drink copious amounts of champagne. and in between it all take a nap then wake up and do all voer again. After all that then life is complete and i can die a happy person with a full stomach…

My fiance and I are big Anthony Bourdain fans so if I (we) live to be 100, I would want to go to every single place that he has visited and enjoy the same food. I would also pray for a strong stomach cuz some of the stuff he eats can be pretty far out there!

I’m eating a perfectly ripe, juicy peach right now and all I can think is that I would love to be able to have the same experience in the dead of winter. Surely someone can figure out how to do it without resorting to drastic, unnatural measures?

I would love to have a fantastic meal in Paris with my husband, with a view of the city below us.

It can be a simple meal of sandwiches on freshly baked baguettes, or a three course meal. But this would mean that he’s over his unwillingness to travel and is willing to try new foods that may make him feel sick.

My ultimate culinary fantasy is sooo greedy, I’m *almost* too embarrassed to admit it–heh–but I wanna always find available public parking within one space plus/minus from any restaurant–anywhere. Any time. And experience that for 100 years. Now that’s the fantasy I’m talkin’ about!

I’d love to eat at a cozy little bistro in Paris with my husband after spending the whole day walking around the city. I’ve never been to France (yet) so although many people have realized this dream already, it’s still on my list!

My culinary fantasy is to be able to judge an Iron Chef contest, with the world’s best chefs, and the secret ingredient is some kooky, crazy ingredient…like…black ear fungus or something like that. How wicked would that be?! I get to eat multiple 5-course meal that is interesting and fun, with the world’s best chefs kissing my ass, quaking in their chef whites or clogs. That would be cool.

I have been fortunate to have experienced some amazing food adventures all over the map. There is a small seafood shack in Ujung Pandang on the Island of Suleweisi that is almost impossible to find, but if you go … See moredown to the harbor masters offices and then begin to wind your way through the back streets of the seamy underbelly, past the mix of cheap perfume of the Kupu kupu malam and the sea salt rot of cabbages and drying squid of this tiny port town you will eventually find this no named restaurant on the second floor in a back ally. When you walk in, you go back into the kitchen and just point at whatever the Bugis sailors have hauled in that day. The catch is on ice on the floor and that will be made into some of the most beautiful seafood dishes I have ever eaten! What I remember most vividly is the sauté of psychotropic Sea Snails! Sulawesi cuisine is best known for the grand festival foods of the Toraja people of Tanta Toraja in Central Sulawesi- great feasts on buffalo and pig and as a result, the massive bounty of the coasts along the horse latitudes are often forgotten… but this wee little shack off the beaten track tickles my taste buds… and If I live to be 100, the one culinary fantasy I hope most to experience is to return here and sample the days catch.

Carolyn, it’s like you read my mind, I was just about to say El Bulli too! But since there’s no chance getting on the the wait list before the restaurant closes forever, here’s my second culinary fantasy: travel back to my hometown of Kuching, Sarawak, Malaysia and learn how to make laksa paste from a Sarawak laksa master. Sarawak laksa (aka ‘the breakfast of champions’) would be my pick as my last meal on earth, that’s how good it is. And I’ve never been able to duplicate that amazing flavor.

I would want to go on a Spanish road trip like Gwyneth Paltrow does with Mario Batali, discovering and tasting the many different cuisines of the country. There is nothing more exciting than trying food in a foreign place, especially if you know you like the culture and have an ancestral tie to the people. During our downtime, we’d shop at Mango and Zara (Spanish stores) to keep appearance and health top of mind.

I always thought to myself that I could outeat any one when it comes to ice cream. I have never stopped eating ice cream because I’ve actually had enough – it’s just those darn calories. Just once I’d like to keep eating and eating and see if I can ever really have enough ice cream! The current limit is 3/4 of a pint but I’m pretty sure I can eat at least 2 if it were guilt-free.

And if that were just entirely impossible, I’d like to one day go back to China with an iron stomach and actually dare to eat the street food in Chengde’s night market. I got terrible food posioning the last time I was in China and it scared me for the rest of the trip!

If I could live to 100 and my fantasy didn’t have to be based on reality, I’d want to lock all the world’s dignitaries in a room and feed them good food from around the world until they realize they’re not all that different, and they worked out all their differences.

Ah, my fantasy is more modest but still a nice fantasy. If I live to be 100 I hope to be so healthy that I’ll still be able to eat whatever I like, with all my natural teeth! No worries about sugar, salt, saturated fat, chewy caramels, hard nuts. Now -that- would be a happy 100 years!

If I live to be 100, the one culinary fantasy I hope most to experience is…. to bake with Taste of Home’s test kitchen cooks! Those gals have years of experience & I’d love to glean some tips (not to mention recipes) from them!!

I am so with you on El Bulli. But since you have invited a far flung fantasy, I will indulge my wishes in an rather ego-centric way: I would like Roy Yamaguchi to come to my pavilion in the rainforest at the volcano on the Big Island and prepare an anniversary dinner for my husband and me, our daughters and their ohana. I would like his sommelier to choose the wine pairings. I would like Trey Ratcliff to photograph the event, and Cyril Pahinui to play guitar and sing. And I hope at 100 to be able to still climb into the treehouse and celebrate on!

i would like to share a table with everyone who has touched my life in someway, and there are so so many and serve all of them together at once with their very favorite food and spirits. I want to watch their smile and twinkling eyes shine.

If I lived to be 100 the one culinary fantasy I have is to teach my children and grandchildren every culinary tradition I’ve learned from my grandmother and mother, which includes knife skills, perfect soy-glazed chicken wings, sticky rice, and post-Thankgiving turkey congee but most importantly, confidence in the kitchen.

I also would love to travel the world, savoring the best culinary delights of every country I’ve visted. I’ve started this, but have a long way to go still.

I would love to have my own stand at a farmers market. I used to say that I want to open my own cafe/bakery, but I think that would be too much responsibility on top of whatever job I end up getting once I finish my Ph.D. I think that having a stand once a week would be doable though, right?

I hope that I will be able to spend those final years share the joy of cooking with my twin sister again. We both love to cook and have shared that love for years. We lived within a block of each other until she married and moved away. Until then, we would cook together almost every day. I miss that terribly. I hope when we get in our twilight years that we’ll be fortunate to live close enough to each other, so that we can catch up on those years that we’ve lost. Cooking “with” someone you love is just as important as cooking “for” someone you love.